Today, computer devices such as smart-phones and PMPs (Personal Media Players) have become popular. With the development of 3D technology, more and more these mobile computer devices begin to support 3D displays. Such a mobile computer device would have a 3D display the screen diagonal of which is around 10 inches and would employ auto-stereoscopic display technology including parallax barrier technology and lens array technology, for example.
FIG. 1 illustrates a display device using parallax barrier technology and FIGS. 2A and 2B illustrate a display device using lens array technology.
In the example shown in FIG. 1, a parallax barrier 100 is arranged in front of a display screen 110 so that viewer's left and right eyes can see different left and right views, respectively.
In the example shown in FIG. 2A, a lens array 200 is arranged in front of an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) display screen 210. The lens array 200 includes a number of lenses and each lens is configured so that it distributes images from four different sub-pixels to four different viewpoints, respectively.
In the lens array technology shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, if the left and right views are displayed on the LCD screen 210 as illustrated in FIG. 2B, a plurality of view zones for 3D representation are produced.
As can be seen in FIGS. 1 and 2B, “fuzzy zones”, in which the left eye will see the right view and right eye will see the left view, are produced in both cases. A “fuzzy zone” is arranged alternately with a “normal zone” in which the left eye will see the left view and right eye will see the right view. Such a fuzzy zone can be resolved by switching the left and right views to be presented by the pixels of the display device when it is detected that eyes of a viewer enter into the fuzzy zone, then the viewer can see the corrected 3D representation on the display device.
As described above, in auto-stereoscopic display device, it would be appreciated if the 3D content to be presented on the display device can be seen by a viewer in a wide range of the viewpoint in order to give viewer a better viewing experience. For this purpose, a camera or any other sensor may be used for detecting the viewer's eye position with an eye tracking technique, for example. If it is detected that the viewer's eyes are in the “fuzzy zone”, the left and right views to be presented by the pixels of the display device are switched so that the viewer can enjoy the 3D representation.
However, since continuously detecting the viewer's eye position with an eye tracking technique requires a high amount of calculations for the computer device, if the viewer's eye position is kept detecting while the viewer uses the computer device, large amounts of the power will be consumed for detecting the viewer's eye position.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,091,471 B2 discloses to detect presence/absence of a user's eye in order to switch a power consumption state for power management of a device. However, this reference does not mention how to manage the power consumed for detecting a user's eye position.
An aim of the present invention is to provide more efficient power management for a computer device.